Built for UK water hygiene· the standards, mapped honestly

Software built around ACoP L8, HSG274 and the standards your auditors carry

If you manage Legionella risk for a living, the standards below are your working week. Here's each one, what it asks of you, and where BlueWave carries the load. Described honestly, including what stays your job.

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Standards mapping reviewed September 2026.

The UK water-hygiene landscape, mapped

Standard	What it governs	Where BlueWave helps
HSWA 1974 & COSHH 2002	The legal duties everything else hangs off — manage the risk from biological agents, including Legionella.	The evidence trail that shows you discharged the duty: who did what, where, when.
ACoP L8 (4th edition)	The approved code of practice for controlling Legionella in water systems — what duty-holders must have in place.	Records, responsibilities and schemes of control organised the way L8 expects them to exist.
HSG274 Part 1	Evaporative cooling systems — cooling towers and condensers, the highest-consequence assets.	Monitoring regimes as recurring schedules; readings captured against the asset.
HSG274 Part 2	Hot and cold water systems — temperature monitoring, flushing, the bread-and-butter regime.	Temperature runs as recurring booked work, with job sheets that flag out-of-range readings.
HSG274 Part 3	Other risk systems — spray humidifiers, vehicle washes, fountains and the rest.	Custom form schemas for the odd systems, same records discipline.
HSG282	Spa-pool systems — their own control and monitoring guidance.	Spa regimes scheduled and recorded like any other programme.
BS 8580-1	Risk assessment for Legionella — the methodology your assessments should follow.	Assessments uploaded and filed against the asset or site they cover.
BS 7592	Sampling for Legionella in water systems — how samples should be taken and handled.	Sample details recorded in the job sheet at the point of collection, in the fields your template sets.
BS EN ISO 11731	Laboratory enumeration of Legionella — the method behind the lab report you receive.	Jobs waiting on the lab tracked until the results arrive, with the lab's report kept on the booking.
HTM 04-01	Safe water in healthcare premises — the NHS estates regime.	The evidence trail healthcare auditors expect, in the structure they expect it.
PWTAG	Swimming-pool water treatment — the pools sector's technical code.	Pool monitoring programmes scheduled and recorded alongside everything else.
Legionella Control Association (LCA)	The Legionella Control Association's code for service providers — including records kept for five years.	Five-year retention by default, every change logged, and the records that evidence your service standards.

HSWA 1974 & COSHH 2002
What it governs
The legal duties everything else hangs off — manage the risk from biological agents, including Legionella.
Where BlueWave helps
The evidence trail that shows you discharged the duty: who did what, where, when.
ACoP L8 (4th edition)
What it governs
The approved code of practice for controlling Legionella in water systems — what duty-holders must have in place.
Where BlueWave helps
Records, responsibilities and schemes of control organised the way L8 expects them to exist.
HSG274 Part 1
What it governs
Evaporative cooling systems — cooling towers and condensers, the highest-consequence assets.
Where BlueWave helps
Monitoring regimes as recurring schedules; readings captured against the asset.
HSG274 Part 2
What it governs
Hot and cold water systems — temperature monitoring, flushing, the bread-and-butter regime.
Where BlueWave helps
Temperature runs as recurring booked work, with job sheets that flag out-of-range readings.
HSG274 Part 3
What it governs
Other risk systems — spray humidifiers, vehicle washes, fountains and the rest.
Where BlueWave helps
Custom form schemas for the odd systems, same records discipline.
HSG282
What it governs
Spa-pool systems — their own control and monitoring guidance.
Where BlueWave helps
Spa regimes scheduled and recorded like any other programme.
BS 8580-1
What it governs
Risk assessment for Legionella — the methodology your assessments should follow.
Where BlueWave helps
Assessments uploaded and filed against the asset or site they cover.
BS 7592
What it governs
Sampling for Legionella in water systems — how samples should be taken and handled.
Where BlueWave helps
Sample details recorded in the job sheet at the point of collection, in the fields your template sets.
BS EN ISO 11731
What it governs
Laboratory enumeration of Legionella — the method behind the lab report you receive.
Where BlueWave helps
Jobs waiting on the lab tracked until the results arrive, with the lab's report kept on the booking.
HTM 04-01
What it governs
Safe water in healthcare premises — the NHS estates regime.
Where BlueWave helps
The evidence trail healthcare auditors expect, in the structure they expect it.
PWTAG
What it governs
Swimming-pool water treatment — the pools sector's technical code.
Where BlueWave helps
Pool monitoring programmes scheduled and recorded alongside everything else.
Legionella Control Association (LCA)
What it governs
The Legionella Control Association's code for service providers — including records kept for five years.
Where BlueWave helps
Five-year retention by default, every change logged, and the records that evidence your service standards.

Built around these standards, not certified by them. No software is.

BlueWave is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Legionella Control Association.

Where the load actually shifts

ACoP L8: audit-ready means findable

L8's records expectations fail in practice for one reason: the records exist but can't be produced. BlueWave files each job sheet against the customer, site, asset and job it belongs to, and the Library finds it again by any of those or by date, so producing five years of evidence is a search rather than an excavation.

Compliance records in depth

HSG274: regimes become schedules

Monthly sentinel temperatures, quarterly cleans, annual reviews: HSG274's monitoring tables are scheduling problems. BlueWave turns the regime into recurring jobs whose job sheets flag out-of-range readings, so the programme is planned once and the gaps show up before the auditor finds them.

Scheduling in depth

BS 7592 & ISO 11731: sampling with a chain

Good sampling practice dies at transcription. BlueWave doesn't read lab reports, but it stops them going missing: the engineer records the sample in the job sheet at the asset, the booking waits under Waiting on lab until the results arrive, and the UKAS report is uploaded to that booking and included in its service report.

Lab results in depth

LCA: five years, by default

The LCA expects service providers to keep records for five years and to evidence their service standards. BlueWave keeps every record and logs every change, so demonstrating your standards starts from the records, not from memory.

How retention works

The operational side of the same story: the eight leaks BlueWave closes

What records does HTM 04-01 expect from a water hygiene contractor?

The evidence an NHS estates auditor can follow without asking you to explain it: monitoring results filed against the asset they were taken from, service reports and remedial actions with dates, risk assessments filed against the asset, lab reports kept on the booking they belong to, and a change trail on every record. HTM 04-01 governs safe water in healthcare premises. The duty sits with the trust; your job is handing them a record that survives being read back.

BlueWave files all of it customer → site → asset → job, retains for five years by default, and logs who changed what and when. What it cannot do is certify anything — no software makes an estate HTM 04-01 compliant, and a vendor who says otherwise is selling you a risk. If you serve NHS or private healthcare clients, bring their audit requirements to a demo and run them against the platform.

Go deeper

The duty-holder guides behind this page — plain English, no email walls:

The questions compliance managers ask first

Does using BlueWave make us ACoP L8 compliant?

No, and be wary of software that implies otherwise. Compliance duties belong to duty-holders and the competent people supporting them; no tool discharges them. What BlueWave does is make the evidence quick to produce when someone asks for it: the records, the schedules, the trail. The duties stay yours. The paperwork stops being a second job.

What records does the Legionella Control Association (LCA) expect us to keep?

The LCA's standards for service providers expect records of the work you deliver — monitoring results, assessments, remedial actions — retained for five years. BlueWave keeps them by default, filed against the site and asset they belong to, with an audit trail of changes.

Can BlueWave run our HSG274 monitoring programme?

Yes, that's the core of it. The monitoring regime becomes recurring jobs, booked in date by date; each booking carries its job sheets, which flag readings outside the expected range; readings file against the asset's history. Missed or overdue dates are visible, which is precisely what a programme on a spreadsheet can't tell you.

Is BlueWave suitable for HTM 04-01 healthcare estates?

The records structure, audit trail and retention suit healthcare estates work, and the platform is built around the same standards HTM 04-01 leans on. If you serve NHS or private healthcare clients, bring their audit requirements to a demo and test us against them.

What's a written scheme of control, and where does it live?

It's the document ACoP L8 expects for each system at risk — what the system is, who's responsible, what monitoring happens, what to do when results are out of range. In BlueWave it lives with the site it describes, next to the records that prove it's being followed.

Bring your audit checklist

The fastest way to evaluate a compliance platform is to audit it. Book a demo, bring the checklist your auditors use on you, and run it against BlueWave live.

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